By Kristin Y. Christman, Commentary

Published 3:12 pm, Saturday, May 10, 2014

When President James Madison proposed war against Britain in 1812, Congressman Samuel Taggart, noting the war's aggressive intent, scoffed at the notion that Canadians would welcome their U.S. conquerors as liberators and "immediately flock" to the U.S. flag.

President James K. Polk's 1846 invasion of Mexico ignited Theodore Parker to exclaim: "Treason to discuss a war which the government made, and which the people are made to pay for? If it be treason to speak against the war, what was it to make the war...?"

William Goodell characterized the U.S. government as standing "with a bowie knife in one hand and a purse...in the other" and commanding Mexico, "sell me half of your land at my own price...If not, receive this knife into your bosom."

Ezra Heywood, an abolitionist, opposed Abraham Lincoln's Civil War: "...slaveholders are my brothers not less than slaves....I would not do evil that good may come...."

President William McKinley's 1898 war against Spain, allegedly to liberate Cubans, provoked Bolton Hall's remark: "instances of cruelty to negroes have occurred in this country which equal, if they do not surpass, anything which has occurred in Cuba....We see every day the vast injustice prevailing in our own land...and until we remove these beams from our own eyes should not presume to take the mote from our brother's...."

The list goes on, right up to today's crisis in Ukraine. Each generation, anti-war voices expose war's pointlessness. But what happens? The voices are not even considered. Why?

The steamrolling of anti-war voices is a red flag that demagoguery has replaced democracy. The demagogue manipulates emotions into hatred for an enemy. He sells a telltale formula: "We are good; they are bad; the only solutions are violence, punishment and threats."

If one believes one-sided news that enemies perpetually reject negotiation and never have reasonable grievances, one might believe the demagogue's formula. And with this belief, war and punishment make sense: Defeating evil merely requires conquering the other side.

But anti-war voices dismantle the formula and prove that we are not so innocent, they are not so evil, and solid solutions require addressing each side's defensive and aggressive behaviors. Instead of being black vs. white, conflict is like a piano, with black and white keys intermixed. And because war cannot distinguish between black and white, war cannot play this piano.

Enlightenment philosophers believed democracies could work if guided by reason and knowledge of truth. But how can democracy function in a state of half-truth? Propaganda is clever for arousing hatred, but it undermines abilities to resolve conflict and serves merely as a double-edged sword, hurting opponent and self alike.

We hear of chaos in Ukraine and Venezuela, but we don't readily hear about the U.S. government's role in aggravating these conflicts. Why? Is the goal of government and media to uphold the demagogic formula or to see through it?

Is the purpose to portray the U.S. government as innocently saving the world from the Dark Side or to reveal the positive and negative motivations of each side?

Is the purpose to assume that our National Endowment for Democracy and its 60-plus Ukrainian projects promote fair elections or to question whether it catalyzes conflict because it has misdefined democracy and partially replaced the CIA?

Is the goal to depict the foreign economic plans of the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund as benign or to discuss their controversial consequences? Is the aim to perceive capitalism as a branch of democracy or to explore several economic ideologies?

Is the purpose to ignore ramifications of NATO's installations pressing upon Russian borders and U.S. joint military exercises in former Soviet republics or to consider how the U.S. would feel if tables were turned?

Is the goal to ignore U.S./NATO military interests in controlling pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea oil basin and through the Ukraine or to question such extra-territorial ambitions?

Trampling anti-war voices is also symptomatic of lack of representation. Immanuel Kant reasonably believed democracies would behave peacefully because people would not vote for war. But war is not put to a public vote. The only input wanted from us is taxes, troops and draft registration.

When American revolutionaries cried, "No Taxation without Representation," they didn't tack on, "except in foreign policy, because you, King George, are tops at that." But we are utterly unrepresented in foreign policy. Voting for candidates is meaningless when candidates presented by dominant parties and TV networks barely vary in policy views.

Daniel Webster's solution may be relevant. Incensed at the absurdity of a free government claiming unconstitutional powers to conscript, Webster declared that state governments' purpose requires them "to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power." In fact, the U.S.'s 1812 conquest of Canada failed largely due to state action: New York's militia refused to cross the border into Canada.

Democratic governments must discuss the truth, including defensive and aggressive roots of violence and cooperative, constructive solutions. Such truth provides intelligence vastly more meaningful than interrogator and spy-gathered "intelligence." It is a truth not acquired through torture.

But if this truth is neglected, if we are taxed without representation, if demagoguery trumps democracy, then, in accord with constitutional checks and balances, it becomes each state's responsibility to safeguard citizens' taxes and lives from serving demagogic foreign policy.